• State Faces

    state.ie names its artists to look out for in the 12 months flowing from January each year, and accompanied by original photoshoots from our team of photographers.

Pale Rivers

County Cork continues to produce artists of rare quality and vision.

Photographed for State’s Faces by Kieran Frost

Was 2016 a fruitful year for the band?

2016 has been been a very good year for us. We only really launched the band in early October 2015 so since then it’s gone by very quick. We spent the first part of the year working quietly on things, getting everything together in terms of recording, writing and getting the video done for the single so it’s been great to see all that come together and finally get to go out and play some really cool shows on the back of it.

With regard to recording, do you think there’s enough opportunities for upcoming bands get their work down regularly without great expense?

It can definitely be a challenge, for sure, but it’s also one of those things that you can potentially make it as expensive or a cheap as possible depending on what studio you go to, how long you’re there etc. In our case we do like to kind of take our time with recording and hone in on individual parts so it’s rarely been a case of go in and track everything for a song in matter of hours or just one day. I think we’ve been lucky to work with some people with studios and producers who were willing to put in extra time on sessions.

Who would you say has been the biggest influence on Pale Rivers, band, artists, or otherwise?

That’s a pretty tough one to answer, we all listen to a bunch of different types of music, so it’s very much a mixed bag. I do think though that a big influence on the band has been the producers that we’ve been lucky enough to work with. Over the last year we’ve worked with two really great guys here, one being Gavin Glass and the other is Owen Lewis. I think both of those guys opened our eyes to aspects of recording and writing that we might not have considered before or necessarily been aware of so that’s really had an affect on how we’ve been putting things together since, I think.

Tell us a bit about your favourite recent gig – could be one you played, attended…

That’s another tough one to call as we’ve really been enjoying pretty much all of the gigs that we’ve been doing. We supported Teleman in The Workman’s Club which was really cool. It was the first support that we did that was sold out and it’s always cool to get to play to a bigger crowd. It’s something really great to see in recent times that people are making the time to see support acts which is so important when you want to get your music out there. Obviously it can be challenging being the support too, but it’s also a great learning curve. Getting tracks shared online is awesome but nothing really beats playing live, especially for new crowds.

Is there anything in the pipeline that will ensure 2017 is the year of Pale Rivers?

We have a bunch of things planned for this year, right now we’re looking at some more singles in January and February with an EP to follow. Besides that we really just want to get out and play as much as we can and focus again on writing more music.